It’s the Spectrum in Philadelphia, moments before the opening tip of the 1976 national championship game. Indiana is trying to go undefeated and glowering coach Bob Knight walks straight to official Irv Brown. Knight is complaining and the game hasn’t even started. What about?

With the nation glued to the 75th edition of the Final Four at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta this weekend, no one in Colorado has more of a bond with the big event than the granddaddy of Denver sports talk radio. Brown, a 1953 graduate of Denver’s North High School, officiated six Final Fours from 1969 to 1977.

He officiated three UCLA title games, including Lew Alcindor’s last college game in 1969 and Bill Walton’s first national title in 1972. Brown worked the semifinal between North Carolina and Nevada-Las Vegas in 1977 when, before the shot-clock era, the Tar Heels played a four- corners offense much of the second half.

Boulder High product Glen Gondrezick was a star on that UNLV team. “I called three blocks on Gondo and he wouldn’t speak to me,” Brown said. “And he was a good friend of mine.”

Mostly, however, Brown remembers the coaches. If the NBA is a players’ game, college basketball is a coaches’ game. Brown got to know the top coaches up close — and sometimes, in the Final Four, way too personal.

Recently, the 78-year-old Brown sat down to reminisce about those Final Fours of old. How old? Brown called games before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird turned the NCAA Tournament into a three-week, bracket-busting sporting extravaganza.

When Brown worked his first Final Four, in Louisville, Ky., in 1969, Alcindor completed his legendary college career with UCLA’s 92-72 drubbing of Rick Mount and Purdue. Brown earned $150. And a watch. At the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas last month, officials made $3,500 per game.

Photo courtesy of Rich Clarkson, Rich Clarkson and Associates

North Carolina’s Steve Previs tries to stop Florida State’s Otto Petty from scoring as referee Irv Brown, left, follows the action during a semifinal game at the 1972 Final Four in Los Angeles. Florida State won 79-75. George Karl, former Denver Nuggets head coach, had 11 points, six rebounds and five assists as a junior guard for North Carolina.

Welcome to Knight school

What’s it worth getting chewed out by Knight on national TV? Listening to Brown, it sounds as if he would have worked the Final Four for free. He tells tales like your favorite bartender who will accept belly laughs for tips.

And Brown has almost as many tales about coaches as Knight has wins.

Speaking of Knight, in that 1976 title game, Brown is working with Bob Wortman, the only official to call an NCAA title game and a Super Bowl. But this is his first time calling Knight’s team.

“(Wortman) asked me about him and I said, ‘Ah, it’s a piece of cake,’ ” Brown relayed. “He probably won’t even yell at you.’ ”

“He gets real close and goes, ‘Bob, you’ve never had one of my games, have you?’ ” Brown said.

” ‘No.’ ”

“He said, ‘Bob, don’t let Irv Brown (mess) it up.’ ”

During the game, Indiana forward Bobby Wilkerson gets knocked cold by a foul neither Brown nor Wortman see. Knight goes bonkers. While trainers try to revive Wilkerson, Knight walks onto the court and tells Brown: “Do me a favor. When you die, on the back of your driver’s license there’s a place for what you do with all your organs. Give your eyes to the blind. You never used them.”

When Wilkerson finally comes to, and walks off the court and the telecast goes to commercial break, Brown resists the temptation to give Knight a technical foul.

One of Brown’s all-time favorite coaches was Marquette’s Al McGuire. Near the end of his career, McGuire never lost his sense of humor, street smack or sense of drama. Before working the 1974 Final Four in Greensboro, N.C., Brown has Marquette against Michigan in a regional championship game in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Brown’s partner is Booker Turner, a highly respected African-American referee. McGuire has a tough, physical African-American power forward named Maurice Lucas. When Turner walks onto the court, McGuire waits until Lucas is within earshot.

In Greensboro, sure enough, Brown gets Marquette again, this time in the national title game against North Carolina State. Marquette guard Earl Tatum has the ball and N.C. State’s Moe Rivers takes a swipe, making slight contact.

“So the brain tells the whistle one thing and it does something else,” Brown said. “I’m going to pass. Well, there’s a little toot on the whistle. So you have a choice when you make a little toot: You either come back and have a strong whistle or you hope nobody heard it.”

Well, Tatum heard it. He stops and holds the ball.

There’s no “strong whistle,” however, and Wolfpack star David Thompson steals the ball and goes down for a layup. Brown, having no shot at a makeup call or saving face, calls Marquette’s Bo Ellis for goaltending. Someone else heard the toot.

Al McGuire.

“So here comes Al,” Brown said. “He comes out on the court: ‘The whistle! The whistle!’ I said: ‘Al, you can’t be on the floor. That’s a technical.’ ‘The whistle! The whistle! The whistle!’ ”

After the game, which the Wolfpack wins 76-64, Sports Illustrated’s Curry Kirkpatrick knocks on the door of the referees’ locker room.

“He comes in and says, ‘I just saw the damn- dest thing,’ ” Brown said. ” ‘There’s about 200 (reporters) trying to get McGuire to rip you. And all he said was, ‘Ah, I had a bad day.’ ”

Brown stopped officiating in 1978. He was only 47. But he had just become the supervisor of officials for the Western Athletic Conference and was doing TV analysis on Nuggets games on top of being the University of Colorado’s baseball coach. Just before Final Four tipoffs, he said, UCLA coach John Wooden would chat with him about baseball.

This weekend, Brown is watching the Final Four, as always, but he won’t watch the officials.

“No, I’m a fan,” he said.

He doesn’t like the instant replay monitor that has become prevalent in the college game. “It slows it down,” he said. “It’s a safety value. If you screw up, you go to that. Before, you make a call and if you were bad, they fired you.”

He will enjoy Monday night’s championship game, and know that no matter what happens, he will escape a coach’s wrath. There won’t be Knight knocking on his door, as he did after that 1976 final against Michigan, and telling Brown, before joining Indiana’s celebration, “Did you take too many baseballs to the head without a helmet?”

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